Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973) Chronology (updated), 1973, 2005
1890-July 8. Stanton Macdonald-Wright (SMW) born in Charlottesville, Virginia, to Archibald Davenport Wright, and Annie van Vranken Wright; an older brother, Willard Huntington Wright (WHW), was born 15 October 1887.
1900-SMW moves with family to Santa Monica, California.
1906-SMW begins study at the Art Students League of Los Angeles with Warren T. Hedges (1883-1910) and Joseph Greenbaum (1864-1940); befriends fellow student and modernist painter Rex Slinkard (1887-1918).
1907- Expelled from Harard Military School, Los Angeles
1908 -Marries Ida Wyman
1909-June 27. SMW leaves for Europe; arrives in Paris in the fall and takes a studio on rue Notre Dame des Champs. Meets fellow American art student Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), who becomes a close friend. SMW attends lectures at the Sorbonne and comes in contact with Henri Focillon (1881-1943), who introduces SMW to Asian art and philosophy. Briefly attends the Académies Julian, the Colarossi, and Casteluccho.
1910-Salon d'Automne, Accepted Stanton Macdonald-Wright's painting, 1990,
1911-SMW tours London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Dordrecht, Antwerp, and Brussels. Meets Morgan Russell (MR; 1886-1953); Russell takes SMW to the atelier of Percyval Tudor-Hart (1873-1954), the Canadian painter and color theorist; MR and SMW study with and work for Tudor-Hart and during this time study color theory extensively and undertake the researches that lead to the founding of Synchromism. MR introduces SMW to Matisse, Rodin, and Gertrude and Leo Stein.
1912-Salon des Independents, Accepted Stanton Macdonald-Wright's painting,
1913- Exhibits in Munich and Paris with Morgan Russell; returns to New York; separates from his wife
1913-June 1-30. Two-person exhibition, Ausstellung der Synchromisten Morgan Russell, S. Macdonald-Wright, Der Neue Kunstsalon, Munich.
-27 October-8 November. Two-person exhibition, Les Synchromistes: Morgan Russell et S. Macdonald-Wright, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris. In his individual introduction in the exhibition catalogue, SMW writes: "We are incapable of imagining a form that is not the result of some contact of our senses with nature. Or at least the forms that issue from this contact are infinitely more expressive and varied than those born of the inventive labor of the intellect. So far as form is concerned, one must maintain a relationship with nature. In opposition to purely logical theories, we mean to stay true to reality. In it is the foundation of every pictorial work."
1914-March 2-16. Two-person exhibition, Exhibition of Synchromist Paintings by Morgan Russell and S. MacDonald-Wright, Carroll Galleries, New York. In their introduction to the exhibition catalogue, SMW and MR write: "Besides solving the problem of the inherent nature of colors in their relation to form, we have applied ourselves to a close study of the harmonious relation of these colors to one another. And, as a result of the incorporation of these colors into gamut-form, they convey the notion of 'time' in painting. They give the illusion that the canvas develops like music, in time, while both the old and modern paintings exist strictly in space. With one glance they can be felt in their entirety." Both return to Paris, moving on to London because of the War.
1915/18 Returns to New York; teaches; exhibits at Anderson and Daniel Galleries
1915. February. SMW collaborates with WHW on Modern Art: Its Tendency and Meaning, published in November.
1916-March 13-25. Group exhibition, The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters, Anderson Galleries, New York. SMW and WHW are among the organizers of this important exhibition.
1917-March 20-31. One-person exhibition, Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by S. Macdonald-Wright at the Photo-Secession Gallery ("291"), New York.
1918-October 12. SMW leaves New York for Southern California.
1919 Returns to Los Angeles
1920-SMW begins work on a stop-motion color film process and completes a full-length feature that is destroyed in a fire at the Blum Laboratories, Hollywood.
-Marries Jeanne Redman; creates color film (destroyed)
-Exhibits in studio with Vysekal, Russell, Benton, Wm Yarrow, Preston Dickinson
-February 1-29. Group exhibition, Exhibition of Paintings by American Modernists, organized by SMW with the help of WHW and Alfred Stieglitz, at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, Exposition Park (the art division is now the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; hereafter referred to as the Los Angeles Museum). SMW gives several lectures there on modern art.
1922-Lectures at Chouinard Art Institute
1923-Teaches at Chouinard; Teaches and directs Art Students League; studies Asian arts and
-SMW begins teaching at the Los Angeles Art Students League; soon takes over as
-February. Group exhibition, The First Exhibition of the Group of Independent Artists of Los Angeles, Taos Building, West First Street, Los Angeles.
1924-SMW writes and privately publishes A Treatise on Color, which summarizes the synchromist method; "I have just gotten out a book on color, 60 copies with handmade charts of spectrums, which I hope to sell at $10 each. This is in the hands of God" (SMW to MR). 1925 Exhibits at Los Angeles County Museum, the Hollywood Library Art Gallery
1925-Modern Art Workers group of painters organized.
-5 October. Exhibit at the Hollywood Library Art Gallery; SMW writes manifesto and speaks at exhibition opening.
1927-Synchromism exhibition with Morgan Russell, Los Angeles County Museum and Oakland Art Gallery
-SMW writing, directing and staging Synchromist Theater in Santa Monica, makes use of projected color with a device related to his and MR's ongoing interest in building a kinetic light machine.
-April. SMW stars as Pancho Lopez, a Mexican bandit, in The Bad Man by Porter Emerson Browne, stage sets by Albert Henry King.
1930-Exhibits at Santa Monica Public Library 1931 Exhibits with Russell at California Palace of the Legion of Honor
1932-January 4-23. Two-person exhibition, Exhibition by S. Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, New Stendhal Art Galleries, Los Angeles.
-February. Show travels to Los Angeles Museum.
-October 3-29. One-person exhibition, S. Macdonald-Wright: 13 New Paintings, An American Place, New York. From SMW's artist's statement for that show: "To me reality exists within-hence my lack of interest in the topical."
1933-SMW writes A Basis of Culture, an unpublished survey of world art.
1934-January. SMW begins planning mural cycle for the Santa Monica Public Library, sponsored by the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP); finishes first section in April.
-Group exhibition at Los Angeles Art Association
1935- Show in Abstract Painting in America, Whitney Museum of American Art. -August. Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project (WPA/FAP) founded as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, under the direction of Holger Cahill.
-August 25. Santa Monica Public Library murals finished and dedicated to Archibald Davenport Wright and the City of Santa Monica. "They [the mural panels depicting the technical and imaginative pursuits of man] coalesce and fuse in what perhaps holds the greatest potentialities for art expression invented by man-the medium of the moving picture" (SMW, speaking on the occasion of the dedication).
"The subject is the two-fold artistic and technological development of mankind, in which the two streams flow together in the creation of the three-color motion picture. (Macdonald-Wright had invented a color film process, made films, and devised a color organ to play his synchromies.)" -Park, 2003, 1930s
-November. WPA/FAP established in California in November, SMW hired that month as a non-relief professional artist.
-December. SMW becomes WPA/FAP district supervisor for Los Angeles County.
1936-March 10-28. Group exhibition, "Ten Pacific Coast Painters: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Group," Carl Fischer Gallery, New York.
-Teaches at University of Southern California
1937-Group show: Federal Art Project: Paintings, Prints Stendhal Galleries, Los Angeles
-Resigns from FAP/WPA
-Completed Landing of the Vikings, 20 x 40 feet, painted on a primed asbestos curtain, Stage Curtains for Barnum Theater.
-Tours Japan, learning Japanese and Chinese, 1980
1938-Rejoins FAP/WPA as state director for Southern California
-Architectural murals in Southgate, Santa Monica, and Long Beach and perfected a mosaic compound that he termed Petrachrome.
1939-Group exhibition Southern California Art Project, Los Angeles County Museum
1941-29 August-3 September. Holger Cahill prepares a field report on the Southern California FAP and writes: "On the basis of production the Southern California Art Project not only leads the other projects of the Pacific Coast, but also all other WPA art projects. It has produced more creative work in proportion to employment than any other state art project, and it has maintained standards of quality in this production equal to those of any other art project in the country."
1942-June. SMW starts to write column for Rob Wagner's Script, continues for four years.
-Teaches at Lorser Feitelson's studio.
-November 12. SMW becomes lecturer for the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Eastern aesthetics and art history.
1942/43-Exhibits at Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles.
1944-Exhibits at San Francisco Museum of Art with William Gaskin.
1945-Exhibits at Stendhal Galleries with Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg.
-Exhibits at Los Angeles County Museum.
1946-Group exhibit Pioneers of Modern Art in America Whitney Museum, NY.
-At UCLA, teaching Asian art and seminar in contemporary art.
-9 April-19 May. Group show, Pioneers of Modern Art in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
1948-22 October-12 November. Retrospective exhibition, Thirty-five Years of Creative Painting by Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Art Center School Gallery, Los Angeles.
1950-ExhibitsThree American Pioneers with Morgan Russell and Patrick Bruce at Rose Fried Gallery, NY.
1951-Wife, Jeanne, dies.
1952-Marries Jean Sutton.
-October 25. SMW travels to Tokyo under aegis of Fulbright scholarship to study Chinese and Japanese painting and sculpture; in Tokyo in December, teaches two courses on modern art.
1953-Exhibits Ten American Abstract Painters 1912-1952 Rose Fried Gallery, NY
-March. Health failing, SMW returns to America from Tokyo, where he had completed his unpublished manuscript, Beyond Aesthetics.
1954-Resigns from UCLA due to ill health.
1955-January 1. SMW elevated to rank of professor emeritus, UCLA, having retired officially as of 31 December 1954.
-Exhibits Stanton Macdonald Wright Rose Fried Gallery, NY
1956-19 January-19 February. Retrospective exhibition, A Retrospective Showing of the Work of Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Los Angeles County Museum. SMW says at the time: "At first I saw my new painting with a certain astonishment, for I had made a great circle, coming back after 35 years to an art that was, superficially, not unlike the canvasses of my youth. However, at bottom there was a great difference. I had achieved an interior realism. . . . This is a sense of reality which cannot be seen but which is evident by feeling."
-One person exhibition at Galerie Arnaud, Paris
-One person exhibition at Duveen-Graham Gallery, NY
1957-Appears on Lorser Feitelson's NBC television show on art.
1958-One person exhibition, Galleria Schneider, Rome, Italy.
1959-SMW builds, after decades of experimentation, consultation, false starts and near-successes, the first version of the Synchrome Kineidoscope, a light machine first conceived of in Paris with MR.
1960-August. Group exhibition, Fifty Paintings by Thirty-seven Painters of the Los Angeles Area, San Francisco Museum of Art, curated by Henry Hopkins.
1961-Group Show Directions in 20th Century American Painting Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.
1962-Recovers from heart attack.
1963-27 February-14 April. Group exhibition, The Decade of the Armory Show, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
1964-One-person exhibition "Evocation, Gods, Places, Things" Esther Robles Gallery, LA
-"Stanton Macdonald-Wright" Rose Fried Gallery, NY
-Group exhibition "Synchromism and Color Principles in American Painting 1910-1930" at M. Knoedler Gallery, NY
-"The Works of Stanton Macdonald-Wright" Esther Robles Gallery, LA
1965-January. In Kyoto, SMW conceives of the Haiga series of color woodblocks.
"Don't forget that when a well-known man dies, his historians write 'he was a universal genius-great as a poet, writer, theatrical director, painter, lecturer, high jumper, lover, gourmet, etc., etc.' The public loves to hear of a dead universal genius-it abhors, hates, distrusts a living one. A man must be a specialist in one field. He may write poetry and novels, he may paint and draw, and get away with it. But he becomes anathema when he paints and writes" (SMW to Jan Stussy, January 1965).
-Stanton Macdonald-Wright Rose Fried Gallery, NY
-12 October-6 November. Group exhibition, Synchromism and Color Principles in American Painting, 1910-1930, M. Knoedler and Co., New York, organized by William C. Agee.
1966-Completes Haiga series of 20 color woodblock prints with Clifton W. Karhu in Kyoto.
1967-4 May-18 June. Retrospective exhibition, The Art of Stanton Macdonald-Wright, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
1970-16 November-20 December. One-person exhibition, Stanton Macdonald-Wright: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1911-1970, UCLA Art Galleries/The Grunwald Graphic Arts Foundation.
-One person exhibition: Tortue Gallery, Santa Monica.
1972-Group exhibition Color & Form 1909-1914, Fine Arts Gallery, San Diego
1973-22 August, evening. SMW dies at the age of 83 of a heart attack at his home in the Pacific Palisades; services at Chapel of the Dawn, at Gates, Kingsley and Gates Mortuary, Santa Monica.
1976-Lydia Modi Vitale and Steven M. Gelber, New Deal Art: California , Santa Clara, Calif.: de Saisset Art Gallery and Museum, 1976.
-Group exhibition Painting and Sculpture in California:The Modern Era San Francisco Museum of Modern Art by Henry Hopkins.
-Memorial Exhibition at Foster Harmon Gallery, Naples, Florida
1977-Group exhibition Paris-New York Centre National d'Art Georges Pompidou, Paris.
-Group exhibition Perceptions of Spirit in 20th Century American Art Indianapolis Museum of Art
1978-24 January -26 March. Group exhibition, Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
-Gail Levin Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925 George Braziller: NY, 1978
1979-Stanton Macdonald-Wright: Paintings 1903-1973 ARCO Center, Los Angeles.
1980-Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, Painting and Sculpture in Los Angeles, 1900-1945, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980.
Bruce Guenther, The Haiga of Stanton Macdonald Wright, Stanton Macdonald-Wright: Prints of the Haiku, (All works on loan from Zara Gallery, 553 Pacific Ave., San Francisco, Ca. 94133) Western Association of Art Museums: 270 Sutter Street, San Francisco, California 94108, 1980, 4 pp.
1981-Group exhibition An American Place The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY
1982-Stanton Macdonald Wright Forum Gallery, New York.
1983-Group exhibitionThe Forum Exhibition:Selections and Additions Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, NY
1986-Group exhibition Aspects of California Modernism 1920-1950 Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC
1990-Group exhibition Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956 Santa Barbara Museum of Art + five other museums.
-Paul J. Karlstrom and Susan Ehrlich Turning the Tide: Early Los Angeles Modernists 1920-1956, Barry M. Heisler Introduction Santa Barbara Museum of Art1990.
1993-Robin J. Dunitz, Street Gallery: Guide to 1000 Los Angeles Murals , Los Angeles, Calif.: RJD Enterprises, 1993 (with maps).
1999-Will South, "Invention and Imagination: Stanton Macdonald-Wright's Santa Monica Library Mural," Archives of American Art Journal 39, nos. 3 & 4 (1999): 11-20.
2000-Peggy Clifford Santa Monica's Wright Brothers: The Muralist and The Writer Santa Monica Mirror, 1 January 2000, 1 (29)
2001-Color, Myth and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Art
2003-Marlene Park A Romantic in a Frenzied Office: Macdonald-Wright and the Federal Art Projects, 1934-1943 New Deal Federal Arts Project, 2003newdeal.feri.org/smw/ - 9k
2004-Phil Wayne Historic Mural Comes Home The Lookout News, 21 December 2004, 2004b